Last week I got a soaking and sat in the theatre in my damp clothes and contracted a cold.
I will not let it stop me!
But I will not let the audience of Disco-nnect get wet either.
Umbrellas and all that.
Because the spectre of Charles Stewart Parnell is abroad:

Charles Stewart Parnell: (this from Wikipedia)

On 27 September rather than disappoint his followers in the west he addressed a crowd in pouring rain at Creggs on the Galway–Roscommon border and contracted pneumonia.

He returned to Dublin, departing by mail boat on 30 September ("I shall be all right. I shall be back next Saturday week."). He died in his home in Brighton of a heart attack in his wife’s arms on 6 October. He was only 45 years of age.

Adorably human

hell! I am Megan. my belly is full with rosemary chicken and Asian pasta salad and a hazelnut tea cake and coffee.
The Docklands are a foreign country to me.
I arrived yesterday at five o clock but wandered around for an hour before that, knocking on doors of alternative universe door number 403s, being shouted at by men. When you are alone and lost, the Docklands are scarily anonymous and new and vast.But under the firm but playful wing of Maebh ni Shiosta they become smaller and more human and seem paved with opportunity. For instance, after my weary traipsing, Maebh made me a cup of Earl Grey Tea, and we ventured out to a square where we saw a cluster of our friends by the Mr. Whippy. Only a few minutes before, the scale of the area was oppressive and frightening, but now, it is filled with adorably human humans.

Is it for a special occasion?

When I was children, there was an endless vista of time until new clothes were allowed to be worn: aeons until Christmas and a new dress, massive vistas of time until birthday suit costume is finally permissible.

In the endless meantime, articles of clothing sit still somewhere in the home, perfect and still *new*. Still clean and sparkling, not yet bent out of shape or blemished by body.

Now that grown up is the situation, the only limitations are of your own purse.
Still now there can be something pleasurable about waiting for the special occasion to wear the special outfit.

I have been acquiring articles of clothing with Disco-nnect in mind.
July sales must have started early.
I don't think I will be able to wait until Monday to wear them but I try.

The recession is starting on June 30th

The recession is starting on June 30th, at 7pm at Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin.

See you there!

For real real and not for play play

Last night I went to see Love Is A Sniper, by Lola Arias/Compañía Postnuclear.
The piece was very touching and funny and was good to see a piece about love that maintains its sense of humour.

Another touch was made by a post-show comment in the post-show discussion -
about doing something real on stage, like kissing or crying or slapping someone in the face
Ms. Arias mentioned actors who say
"When I kiss on stage, it is not real at all"
But a kiss is a kiss, it is a physical thing,
it is real,
even if the motivation for it is not love or desire.

And if you manage to cry, then you are really crying,
even if the motivation is not the death of your dog but just that you are trying to cry, like it is a skill.

Do you prefer to see something real?
Or do you mind that a performer might not be letting the truth get in the way of a good story?
When you hear a singer sing a song and you know is it biographical - is that cool?
When you see someone crying or sweating or doing something real on stage - is that cool?
Is this cool?
Is that cool?
This guy - cool is he?
Am I cool?

Newspaper Article

Here an article Edel Coffey wrote about us in the Irish Independent:

Massive Attack
Part musicians, part performance artists, part... well... party, the unusual duo You're Only Massive are taking Dubliners by storm and are coming soon to a town near you. Get your dancing shoes on says, Edel Coffey

Gigs by Waterford band You're Only Massive tend to be a little unusual. So unusual, in fact, that its creators don't even call them gigs, or refer to themselves as a band for that matter. "The first time we saw ourselves being called a band, we were laughing for, like, half an hour, because we're not a band, we don't really play instruments," says Maebh Cheasty, one half of the female duo. Megan Nolan, the other half of the band, is back home in Waterford doing her Leaving Cert.

Seventeen-year-old Nolan and 23-year-old Cheasty first came to most people's attention when You're Only Massive played the Hard Working Class Heroes festival last year. Part band, part performance art, part DJ and part MC, this precocious, shambolic and always goodtime duo did away with the usual requirements of musical skill and posturing and instead offered a window into their bedroom-style party, as they sang along with their favourite records, skewed so-called post-feminist lyrics, all while hula-hooping and dancing their way through their sets.

The speed of band's progress from germinal idea to live performance is illustrative of their approach in general. "The first time we had a gig we literally practiced for that day. It was all very slapdash at the start." This is one of the areas where You're Only Massive diverge from their contemporaries. For them, it's not about achieving perfection. "Trying is good, I think," says Cheasty. "What I like is just to see a performer at risk; really invested at that moment and trying hard. Some people want to see something different. You can't please everyone."

Indeed, they have their detractors and the word 'amateur' has been thrown around. "I'm proud and happy to be an amateur," says Cheasty. "The second something is perfect, that's when it's dead, that's the moment it loses interest for you. Ideally, you'd never perfect it. The second you have something finished, then you're just Beyonce. I just really enjoy the feeling of going beyond that and saying, 'Look, this is what we are. We're not pretending to be virtuoso -- if you want something polished and to see someone do an amazing skill, that's not what we are'."

And that is where their unique appeal lies. It's liberating for both performers and audience to experience something a little less uptight than studied performances in cool. "There is a kind of liberation in that. I love it, it's so much fun."

You're Only Massive's main ambition, says Cheasty, is a simple one; to get the party started. But their lyrics have a socio-political dimension and the band has strong echoes of New York's Le Tigre and Berlin's Chicks On Speed. "There's so many great songs out there already, why would you add to that unless you have something to say?" asks Cheasty. One popular live song called Booty deals with the current taste in music for the female posterior.

"Fergie and Beyonce, their lyrics are just like, 'I've got an ass. You wanna look at my ass'. There's something really kind of weird and fetishised about it, and it's all about money. And Kelly Rowland's song, Like This, it's like, 'what are you saying?' I'm so emancipated because I've got a boob job? And really it's, like, 'no you're not, you fool'. Booty is a song that just came out of that."

This outspokenness comes across in their performances too, although Cheasty's seniority and background in youth theatre make her the more forthright performer of the two. Their latest project is called Disco-nnect and is part of the Dublin Docklands festival We Are Here 3.0. It combines elements of their current stage performance with a guided walking tour around the Docklands, culminating with a gig and a party.

"The idea of the audience as kind of an active member of the whole thing is my ideal. Obviously, it doesn't always happen at gigs, because you turn up at your normal indie gig and it's, like, 'okay everyone, do this,' and they're, like 'It's Friday night! Don't make us do that!'

"With the walking tour, the idea is to prepare people for the gig, so when they arrive they know the dances, they're psyched up and ready to go. I think there is a tendency to go to something with your arms folded, to be engaged with something mentally but not physically. It is a stereotype about the Dublin indie crowd just standing there, but it is kind of true too."

Setting their show in different spaces to the norm (where norms of behaviour are also observed) is important to them. "I think people do create their own cultural spaces at house parties. One thing I missed when I moved to Dublin was the sessions that take place in Waterford, because people just have fun and dance."

Their plans for the short-term future include releasing a 12" with Dublin-based Cork band Queen Kong, and Cheasty has another show in development, too. "It is a lot more domestic and involves cooking," she says coyly. The 12" release will be all original, considering the kind of licensing headache that would come with releasing songs that feature the samples they use live. (The Go! Team, for example, had to re-release a remixed version of their debut album Thunder, Lightning, Strike because of sample clearance issues.) "We used two of Ed Chamberlain's beats, he's written some really nice emails giving us his support, but obviously releasing is a whole other thing."

In the meantime, they're planning to take Disco-nnect to New York Conflux festival in September and to do a 32 county tour of Ireland, although some counties are not so sure about them yet. "At the moment it's an 18 county tour," says Cheasty. "Mullingar are not feeling You're Only Massive. I was quite disappointed; the town that gave us Joe Dolan doesn't have time for You're Only Massive."

One thing is sure: this maverick duo certainly has a few surprises in store for those attending Disco-nnect, although they claim no one will be made do anything they don't want to...

Disco-nnect June 30-July 5, Sir John Rogerson's Quay. €10/8. www.wearehere.ie

www.myspace.com/youreonlymassive

- Edel Coffey

Happy Bloomsday!

Yes yes yes

The Sea Sees Me

The Sea Sees Me is a project by Fiona *Fink* Hallinan and Patrick Bresnihan, with live sounds by Rachel Ni Chuinn. Stories are told through words and real taste, touch and smell to a blindfolded audience. It was invented for LightsOFF! a festival of acoustic and non-electric art held in Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny in May 2008 and organised by Kate Strain and Luci Van Delden.

The Sea Sees Me will be performed inside of Disco-nnect (Remix).
Here are some images from a try-out:

What if it rains?

The change in weather has been extreme - yesterday the sun was splitting rocks and today I awoke to an early morning pregnant sky. By the time I went out the rain was pouring down, then it started belting, hard rain drops on my head.

I do like the rain, I like the way it starts conversations:
Buying the newspaper in Porters in City Square shopping centre the lady behind the counter looks at my ratty, dripping hair and clucks in sympathy.

Buying some stamps in the post office the man behind the counter says, with grim satisfaction:
"That's it now, that's the summer"

Buying meat at the butchers the butcher says:
"Sunny south east, wha?"

I like all of this.

But I am a little worried about Disco-nnect.
What if it rains?

WHAT IF IT RAINS?

I called Met Eireann to ask them if it would rain from June 30th to July 5th and the woman on the phone said provision of forecasts are subject to a fee, and anyway, it's too far away to tell.

Maybe I will source 22 umbrellas for this eventuality.
I have worked the route so as walls shelter us for some of the way if necessary.
Maybe it will be a triumph over adversity - a gung ho, wartime spirit taking us over.
"Rain! Ha! That won't stop us!" Audience members will say as they march down Sir John Rogerson's Quay.

I really hope it doesn't rain.